


Last-Minute Replacement

by ArvenaPeredhel



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Songfic but not really, and some Quenya too, sorry guys you'll have to know a bit of French for this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-14 16:14:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16916124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArvenaPeredhel/pseuds/ArvenaPeredhel
Summary: When Jérôme Pradon gets unexpectedly sick during a performance of the Paris revival of Les Misérables, there's only one person who can take his place for a song.





	Last-Minute Replacement

“What are we going to do?” Brigitte asked, her eyes wide. “I think he’s really sick, Mac.”

“Stay calm, for one thing.” the musician said with a deep sigh, knocking on the bathroom door. “Jérome? Are you all right?”

There was no noise from inside the small bathroom save a low groan. “No.” Jérome answered at last. “I can’t go on.”

“You have to!” Brigitte cried, growing more panicked by the second. “You’re on in a minute, you have to go!”

“Can’t.” said the actor. “Sick.”

“What do we do?” Brigitte repeated, turning on her musician friend with a vengeance. “It’s too late for an understudy, we have no time! I’m a stage manager not a miracle worker _wait._ ” She grabbed Jérome’s black tailcoat, eyes widening, and seized his hand as if to beg some favor of him.

“What?” he asked, unease creeping up his spine.

“You… you could do it, Mac!”

“ _No_.” the musician said firmly.

“But you sing!” she insisted. “You’ve got a gorgeous voice and it would just be for a while until Jérome stopped throwing up.”

“I’m a musician, Brigitte, not an actor.”

“You play the harp and there isn’t a harp part in ’ _Seul Devant_ ’. You’ve said that before. You bitched about how they switched it for acoustic guitar in the orchestrations. And besides you’re already dressed in black and you sound a lot like him and you look enough like him that it could work with your hair up like that and you don’t even need a mic you’re so loud.” She’d taken him by the arm and was shoving him into the wings and into the tailcoat. “Please. We don’t have another choice. Marie will go along with it.”

He opened his mouth to protest, but by then the cue had already started and Brigitte had vanished into the depths of backstage. _So much for anonymity…_ he thought, and walked out into the dim light. _The show must go on, I suppose._

The music surged around him as he moved, and he could feel it growing as he slid into what passed for character in his mind. _If only I had my harp…_ he thought, and then let the idea drop. _You’re in mourning. Your friends are dead, and you are the lone survivor of a terrible fight. Now sing, and make them believe it._

_It’s true, after all._

He sank into the crude wooden chair provided for him, one arm propped on the accompanying table, and turned to face the audience before he opened his mouth and began the song.

 _“Il est un deuil que je porte,_ ” he began, and as he thought of grief the tune shifted to his voice. “ _Lourd au coeur comme un secret_.” Secret… he carried such secrets, such weight. That much was true. Without thinking he began to shape the tune, to pour his own heart into it as though it were a _lind va melehtë_ like his uncle used to sing long ago, and as he did the music responded to his call. " _Seul devant ces tables vides,_ “ he continued, forming an image in his mind of his mother’s kitchen now abandoned, of the wreck that had been his father’s forge after their home was attacked, of his cousin’s burnt and forgotten city, ” _Qu'ils ne reverront jamais._ “

In a moment the image shifted, and he could see through the years as though pulling back a veil. ” _On partait changer le monde_ , _on rêvait d'égalité,_ “ he continued as the guitar leapt to a higher octave, and it was _true_ , long ago he and his brothers and his father had dreamt of change and revolution and freedom as though such things were easily in their grasp, ” _et d'un matin de lumière qui ne s'est jamais levé_.“ Bitterly, he laughed - in the darkness once they had dreamed of a morning, that much was true, but it _had_ come, and brought only sorrow with it - and he pressed on. The song was his now, responding to him and surrounding him regardless of the wills of those who played it. _If it is mine, I shall pour myself into it._

 _De la table sous le fenêtre,_ ” he murmured, singing once more of his mother’s deserted kitchen and glimpsing in each note the lively breakfasts he’d once shared with his brothers, “ _habités d'un fol espoir._ ” The image shifted back to his father, now candlelit in darkness at that very table as grief overtook their household, and when he sang of faint hope there was the edge of bitterness in his voice. _I can hear him now. He said there was no use in hope. Only revenge._ _Damn him, and damn me for believing it._

“ _Des enfants ont pris les armes_ ,” he sang, and now there was guilt, anger and pain and grief and  _so much guilt_ , because now rather than a despondent father he could see his brothers, their matching faces mirroring the same smile that morphed into a terrifying resolve. They had taken up arms as children, had sworn the same oath that still bound him,  _why_ had they not heeded their mother and stayed behind, but he could not stop and found himself shaping them from the notes of the cellos until it was them before him rather than the shades of characters from human literature, and still his voice carried him through.

“ _Je les entends encore_ ,” it cried, “ _ces mots brûlants qu'ils ont chantés_ ,” and even as he sang he _could_ hear them again; choking back the sob that sprang to his throat he let their voices mingle with his amidst the guitar and strings until the theater echoed with their ancient words.

Emboldened by their company, he stood, still half-bent over the table, almost screaming at them with each breath he took. “ _Furent leurs dernières volontés_ ,” he said, demanding an explanation, demanding to know _why_ , why you pledged your wills to something so fickle as my father, “ _sur la barricade déserte, à l'aube._ ”

He sank back into the chair, curling in on himself. _I didn’t mean it. I swear I didn’t, why are you doing this,_ and his voice cracked as he begged for forgiveness. “ _Oh, mes amis, pardonnez-moi_ ,” he pleaded, his voice a whisper but the images of those lost emerging from it nonetheless to surround him. _D'être là, de vivre encore_ ,“ he continued, and the picture shifted, changing to a golden sunrise and the morning before the battle that left his world torn to shreds. ” _Il est des deuils que l'on garde, quand tous les chagrins sont morts_.“

Death. After all he had done, he deserved nothing less, and yet he had not found that final penance. _Let it be heard, then. Let the world know my sins._ he decided, and pressed on.

” _Et je vois passer vos ombres, et je pleure nos joies perdues_!“ he cried, and there were tears in his eyes now, for when he looked up from the shelter of his arms and the darkness there were his brothers before him. He rose as if to embrace them, forgetting they were but phantoms of his song, and when they vanished before him he let out a gasping sob and his voice faltered. _"Seul devant ces tables vides_ ,” he choked out, turning back to the audience and stretching out his arms as if asking for absolution from them, “ _que vous ne reverrez plus…_ ”

There was nothing left in him now, nothing but the pain and the guilt and the _song_ , and suddenly something shifted in him and there were tears in his eyes and he was  _sobbing_ at the phantoms of the past and pouring his very _fëa_ into the music until they were one.

“ _Onóror nînya, óravalyën_!” he intoned, no longer caring if he was heard, let them hear, let them _know_ , “ _An ifínië tyenna_!”

His words were a prayer now, for he had shaped the ghosts of his past once more, and not only his brothers but all those he had known and failed, and he _screamed_ at them as he pleaded and sang and the tears streamed down his face. But they were only phantoms, and at last he sank back into his chair with a cry.

“ _Er pono i hamma cumnë_ ,” he finished softly, “ _Pólëan finya munta._ ”

The lights went out, and in the darkness, Kanafinwë Macalaurë Fëanárion found all he could do was weep.

**Author's Note:**

> Quenya translation (sort of; I can't for the life of me reconstruct 'ifínië'): My brothers, forgive me/For leaving you/(But) Alone at these empty tables/I can do nothing.


End file.
